FAIRMONT– The Fairmont City Council held a special meeting on Tuesday afternoon to discuss allegations against three individual council members. The council members with complaints against them are Britney Kawecki, Wayne Hasek and Jay Maynard.

Per state statute, the council members with complaints against them had the opportunity to hold the discussion in closed session. Kawecki opted to do hers in an open meeting format. She said the complaint against her came out of an investigation initiated by the former city administrator.

The city’s current interim administrator, Jeff O’Neil, said that the other council members had received background on the complaints to review, though the documents were not made public. He said that the goal was to determine whether the council wanted to pursue a hearing on the complaint. He advised the council to talk about the complaint in general terms.

During discussion, Council Member Randy Lubenow asked why the city attorney wasn’t present and was told there was a scheduling conflict. Lubenow said that considering there were important items on the agenda, he felt that it was crucial to have legal representation present.

“It seems like first amendment rights on Facebook… I don’t like things that some of the council members put on Facebook. I try not to post stuff on Facebook because I don’t know that anything good is ever going to come out of it when you criticize someone on Facebook, but we can’t stop people from doing it so I don’t know what our action is,” Lubenow said.

Council Member Michele Miller said that harassment should not be tolerated and that she thought there should be a hearing.

“We shouldn’t let this go. We’re setting a precedence by letting it go,” Miller said.

Council Member Jay Maynard said he thought the allegations made were sufficiently serious, but that he was also concerned about the long-standing turmoil and tension among the council.

“I am deeply concerned about the effect all of this has on the city’s ability to hie and retain staff,” Maynard said, noting that the council is about to go out and look for a city administrator again.

“Our reputation the last time we went looking for a city administrator was so terrible that we had to go through two rounds of searching,” Maynard said.

He said that pursuing this matter would only make the reputation worse. Miller challenged that remark and said that a city administrator wouldn’t want to come to a city where there was allegations against staff that wasn’t addressed by the council.

“Harassment on any level should never be tolerated and city staff is only doing their job and our conversations with them should be in a professional light and not in a tone where they feel harassed and on Facebook where they’re getting chewed out,” Miller said.

Lubenow also chimed in and said he wasn’t sure what the issues were with the council.

“We stop a lot of things from happening in this town because we can’t get along,” Lubenow said.

O’Neil said that council could decide to have censure hearing on Kawecki. If the resolution is adopted, it would be on record that her actions were disapproved by the council.

While documents were not made public, Kawecki chose to read through most of the complaints against her. She said she wanted it noted that there was almost no data in the 26 page complaint showing slander or harassment.

“In my opinion and the opinion of my attorney, there is no harassment or bullying,” Kawecki said.

When reading a portion of the complaint, Kawecki said that finding two claimed she criticized and personally and professionally maligned city staff. Finding three claimed she used Facebook to communicate to the citizens of Fairmont that she was the subject of an investigation and that she was told by a city employee to keep the matter confidential.

She said that the last allegation was true but that when she asked why it needed to be kept confidential, she was not given a reason.

“To the trained reader, the flaws in this investigation and the report are glaringly evident,” Kawecki said.

Finally, Kawecki said that while she did not want a censure hearing to take place, she said that if it does, it will be a public hearing so the citizens of Fairmont will hear and fully know how city employees who are supposed to be subordinate to the citizens were allowed to use citizen resources to attack a representative who ran and was elected on government accountability.

Mayor Lee Baarts provided the council with several options on how to proceed. He said it could take no action, conduct a hearing on the complaint under city code of conduct or table the matter to discuss at a later date.

A motion was made by Maynard and seconded by Miller to conduct a hearing on the complaint against Kawecki under city code of conduct. Council Member Wayne Hasek also voted in favor of the hearing but Lubenow voted against it. Kawecki abstained and the motion passed 3-2.

Next, Hasek chose to have the discussion on allegations against him done in closed session. After 20 minutes of conversation, the meeting opened back up and both Hasek and the press were allowed back in.

A motion was made by Maynard to take no action on the allegation of harassment against Hasek. Hasek seconded it. However, Lubenow and Miller voted to hold a hearing on the harassment complaint and Kawecki abstained. In a 2-2 tie, Baarts cast a vote to proceed with the hearing and the motion failed.

A motion was then made by Lubenow and seconded by Miller to go through a code of conduct hearing against Hasek on harassment charges. The motion passed 3-2.

Next, a complaint of undue influence on election races came against Hasek. Kawecki made a motion to move to a public hearing on the matter. The motion passed 3-2 with Hasek and Maynard opposed.

Finally, allegations against Maynard were discussed. Maynard also opted to hold the discussion on him in closed session. After discussion, the meeting opened back up and the council needed to vote on the two allegations against Maynard.

Lubenow made a motion to hold a hearing on the harassment/bullying charges against Maynard. The motion passed 3-2 with Hasek and Maynard opposed. Next Kawecki made a motion to hold a hearing under the city code of conduct against Maynard on undue influence on election races and the motion passed 3-2.

The council did not determine a date for the hearings but it was alluded to that it will take place sometime in January.

On Tuesday the council also spent an hour in closed session engaged in confidential attorney-client communications and litigation strategy related to the Carlson Walters Group, LLC litigation.